Alissa and her sister Amber, also a fine skater, are from this neck of the woods (St. Claire Shores, Michigan). They go to college in Ohio (in fact, Alissa is the U.S. collegiate champion and Amber is the silver medalist), but come back to the Detroit area a lot. I have seen Alissa skate live quite a few times. She is -- what Vietgirl said, LOL. Very smooth and fluid, with excellent transitions between her elements.

But you do have to hold your breath on the jumps -- more so than Sasha. With Alissa, I don't know if it nerves or what.

Sasha is not too bad in this area, IMHO. Sasha usually hits 5 out of 6 or so. That's an .833 batting average. Not bad. Not bad at all.

The one problem I have with Czisny's skating is that her jump landings can be a bit...ugly and short-edged. At Jr. Worlds LP, all of her triples landed very awkwardly with a short sort of hook at the end. I hope that she works on it for next season.

VIETgrlTerifa, considering the skaters in your signature, I think we really might be sharing the same brain. Although I'd probably replace Buttle with Jahnke and Lambiel with Klimkin (I like all of them though).

Czisny seems similar to another favorite of mine, Yukina Ota. They both have light and beautiful movements, spins, spirals, lines, etc., but I wince sometimes when they jump.

Czisny's got it all except for the jump consistency as MM says. I first saw her at the Atlanta Nats and thought this gal could be among the greats. Unfortunately, she can not get those jumps down in front of an audience.

If she could get 6 months with Arutunian and a good sports psychologist, she would be yet another American contender in the Ladies Division.

Sasha is not too bad in this area, IMHO. Sasha usually hits 5 out of 6 or so. That's an .833 batting average. Not bad. Not bad at all.

MM

I would say it's more like 4.5 out of 6. (that translates to exactly 3 out of 4 jumps- for every 4 jumps she attempts, she'll land three of them.) She (typically) falls on a jump and messes another one up (but stays on her feet).

And about Alissa's chances: Kwan and Cohen are virtually on the team; they just have to show up. Of the rest, I'd give Kirk and Meissner a slight edge over the others for the third spot. So I would say it's possible, but not that great.

I'm not sure if Orchid intended this to be a thread about Alissa Czisny specifically, or pretty skaters in general.

There are a lot of pretty skaters at all levels. Some of them are also good at triple jumps, and sometimes the jumping and the aesthetics do not go hand in hand.

I tend to think of "pretty" as girlish and lightweight. For some skaters with more womanly bodies the words that come to my mind are more often beautiful, stunning, gorgeous, etc. Sometimes the same skater can inspire many positive adjectives.

I've been looking for examples and found a lot. Here is a representative sampling, not anywhere near exhaustive.

On the pages with several pictures, there was at least one that made me think "Wow, that's pretty (beautiful, stunning, gorgeous)" or "Wow, she's flexible," or in a few cases "Wow, that's a deep edge" or "Wow, that's an interesting position." There may be other photos on the page that don't have the same effect. And if you browse the sites where I found a lot of skaters, you'll find others who are also noteworthy.

I've chosen an oversampling of Biellmann positions in reference to the other thread.